I stretched, craning my neck over the edge of the sill, looking for some way out, but there was none. Below me, the pisé wall dropped three long stories straight to the ground. Above, more smooth plaster rose to the roof. No way down. No way up. Somehow, I’d have to make my own way.
I had taken the top sheet from the bed and was tearing it into long, thin strips when I heard them, two men coming down the corridor. Working quickly, I tucked my project under the bedspread, then flattened out the wrinkles with my palm. It was Salim who entered first, followed by a man I hadn’t seen before.
Salim leered at me, his eyes lingering on the scythe-shaped bruise that was his handiwork. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, and I could see the gash my corkscrew had made along his forearm. The wound was slightly infected, the skin around it flushed hot and tender.
“Good morning, Leila,” he sneered, in a tone that confirmed what I had already guessed, that we’d met long before that day on the train, and that our acquaintance had not been a pleasant one. “How are you feeling?”
“Fuck you,” I told him.
He nodded to his shadow, and the other man came over and grabbed my arm, yanking me up off the bed.
“Nice try,” Salim said, pulling the covers back to reveal the strips of sheet. He said something in Arabic to his partner, and they both had a good laugh, apparently at my expense.
“What happened to your boyfriend?” I asked, motioning to my eyes to indicate the sunglasses of the second man on the train.
Salim reached forward and hit me hard in the jaw. My head snapped to the side, and I felt the warmth of blood on my tongue. No, whatever past we shared was not a happy one. He barked something to his partner, and the man pulled a hood over my face and hustled me toward the door.
I tried to keep my bearings as we navigated the villa, but somewhere in the curve of the stairwell I lost all sense of direction. By the time we reached our final destination, all I could be certain of was that we were still in Werner’s house. A door was opened in front of me, and I was shoved forward; then I heard the lock click closed and Salim and the other man returning the way we’d come. Freed of my guides, I reached up and lifted the hood from my face.
The room I was in was dark and masculine, furnished in the same ubiquitous colonial fashion I’d seen at both the El Minzah and the Mamounia, the hallmark of expatriate good taste. Leather and dark wood predominated; there were hand-worked ottomans, overstuffed chairs, a red Persian rug, and a mammoth desk inlaid with ebony and cedar. Three of the room’s walls held a staggering collection of weapons, everything from samurai swords to eighteenth-century rifles to medieval maces. An intricately carved mashrabiyya, made to hide the faces of women from the street below, covered the only window, though I couldn’t see what purpose the screen served here, in such an obviously Western place. Outside, heavy iron barred the glass.
On the wall behind the desk was a conglomeration of photographs, mostly black-and-white, mostly taken sometime earlier. Many of them were hunting scenes, shot all over the world. Some had obviously been taken in Africa, the images studded with white canvas tents, Land Rovers, and native guides, the trophies savanna animals. Others showed glimpses of the American West or Canada, a mountain goat, a grizzly bear with monstrous claws. Still others were unmistakably Asian, their backdrops rife with grass huts, the prey here more exotic: a tiger with a single dark hole in its temple, a half dozen wild boars, their stomachs slit to reveal a bloody tangle of viscera.
The non-hunting photographs had been taken in equally exotic locations. In one, a small figure stood next to a giant statue of Buddha. Another showed a man shaking hands with a camouflaged soldier, while behind them, the downdraft from a helicopter’s propellers bent a giant cowlick in waist-high jungle grass.
Though the cast of supporting characters changed, there was one consistent face in almost all of the photographs. He had aged greatly during the years they chronicled, but the essence of his face, the gray eyes and square jaw, had not changed. He was the same man I’d seen in the car that day. Bruns Werner.
There was one photograph, more than any of the others, that caught my eye. It had been taken in black-and-white, in the full-sun blaze of afternoon, and showed three young people at an outdoor café. The setting was Asian. A rickshaw driver sat idle at the edge of the picture. Opposite him, a woman in a plain white cotton shift carried a basket of fruit. A French movie poster behind her showed a young Peter Fonda in Easy Rider. Over the heads of the three friends, a sign told the name of the establishment. Les Trois Singes. The three monkeys.
The figure on the far left was Werner. He held a glass in his hand, lifting it toward the camera as if to toast. On the far right was another man, more handsome than Werner, dark-haired and trim, with the well-muscled physique of a swimmer. The sleeves of his white cotton shirt were rolled up, and he was sitting slightly back in his chair, at perfect ease with the world around him. Between the two men was a woman. She was dressed plainly, in a dark T-shirt, khakis, a canvas jacket, and leather boots. Her head was in motion, her face blurred beyond recognition. Both men were turned toward the woman, as if waiting for something from her, as if enthralled by some electric presence, something I couldn’t see.
There was movement in the corridor, and I turned in time to see the door swing open. Bruns Werner came forward into the room, the soles of his perfectly shined shoes tapping the inlaid floor. He stopped at the edge of the red wool carpet, his hands in the pockets of his suit coat, as if seeing me for the first time. My host regarded me for a moment, his gray eyes revealing nothing.
“Do you know who I am?” he asked, finally.
“Werner,” I answered.
He nodded, then came forward and took a seat behind the desk. “Sit down.”
I did as I was told, taking the chair Werner indicated.
“You must be hungry,” he remarked.
“Yes,” I agreed, my hunger winning out over my pride.
My host punched an intercom on his desk and rattled off a command in Arabic, then turned back to me. “Your breakfast will be here shortly,” he said, sitting back in his chair, regarding my face. “I’m sorry about Salim,” he apologized. “I understand there’s some bad blood between you. Old times.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“No. I guess you wouldn’t.”
Werner lifted the lid of a small wooden case and took out a cigar. I could smell the tobacco from where I sat, the odor so rich it was almost unpleasant.
“Have we met before?” I asked.
“It must be difficult,” he said, ignoring my question. “A tricky situation, really, not knowing one’s past.”
I shrugged. “What do you want from me?”
Werner produced a tiny hooked knife from the top drawer of the desk and snipped off the end of the cigar. “You really don’t remember?” he asked, incredulous.
There was a knock on the door, and Werner called for the person to come in.
“Your breakfast,” Werner observed. “I took the liberty of ordering coffee. You do drink coffee, don’t you?”
An attractive Moroccan woman in a cream-colored suit and matching high heels came forward and set a tray on the table next to me.
“Will that be sufficient?” my host asked.
I looked at the offering. There was a bowl of yogurt, a plate of fresh green figs, a pain au chocolat, a glass of grapefruit juice, and a small pot of coffee. I nodded and gulped down the juice, then took one of the figs. Something told me to eat while I could, that this might be the last food I would see for some time.